Page 101 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

EXPERIENCE, EMPATHY AND STRATEGIC ESSENTIALISM 95

mapped out as challenges facing educators whose long-term goal is not merely to
prepare students for life in a world still troubled by racism, poverty and
intolerance, but to motivate them towards contributing to its betterment.

My departure point is predicated on the belief that the academy is indeed a place
where a student’s consciousness should be politicized, not domesticated;
inspired, not indoctrinated. Students should leave with the tools to develop
informed opinions and a heightened sense of personal accountability to their
responsibilities as human beings, members of communities and global citizens.
In anticipation of a conservative response, I argue that this goal does not, as
some might claim, evidence political correctness, nor is it a reflection of facile
relativism. On the contrary: educators are always projecting their own politics
even where there is a sincere investment in maximizing objectivity. The enquiry
here, therefore, centres on some of the implications for intercultural
programmes, an approach with explicit epistemological and political objectives,
as it pertains to the American context. Race anchors this study, for I do believe
that historian Michael Goldfield accurately identifies white supremacy as the
defining, paradigmatic, idiographic characteristic of the United States (Goldfield,
1991). In this context, therefore, I suggest that the issue of race (despite its status
as a scientifically untenable notion) pervades many of the challenging problems
for the academy with regard to what, how and whom we teach. 2
It is an understatement to note the antipathy people of colour have expressed
towards the labels ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘diversity’. In the first place, the prefix
‘multi’ in multiculturalism alternately evokes the unsavoury images of the
melting-pot or the equally apolitical mosaic. This portrayal of pluralism renders
invisible the causes of fragmentation along class, gender, religious and most of
all, racial, lines. The issue of race and racism—particularly the dominant popular
discourse which centres on a black/white binary—intrudes and intervenes in any
discussion which links culture, diversity and identity. Significantly, the term
‘multiculturalism’ also obscures the persistent tenacity with which the
conception of ‘race’ and ‘culture’ are confused. This occurs both within and
outside educational institutions where the terms (multiculturalism and diversity)
were introduced. Within the academy, in particular, the language of culture and
cultural pluralism often provides a refuge in which race relations are
depoliticized, domesticated and managed.
Can these issues be tackled more productively if we change the labels under
which discussions of curricular reform or transformation are conducted? As
Grant Cornwell and Eve Stoddard emphasize, ‘interculturalism’, as an enquiry into
cultures interacting, is a term deployed to signal cultures as dynamic processes
3
and to highlight the power relations which inform cultural interchange (1994).
While the prefix ‘inter’ escapes the polemical weight of ‘multi’, retention of the

Cultural Studies 11(1) 1997:89–110© 1997 Routledge 0950–2386